Saturday, October 13, 2012

George Diocese Challenges HHS Mandate in Court

With this action, the Catholic Church in Georgia joins more than 50 other dioceses, schools, hospitals, social service agencies and other institutions that have filed suit in federal court to stop these three government agencies from implementing a mandate that would require them to cover and provide for free contraceptives and sterilization in their health plans.

The lawsuit states that the U.S. government “is attempting to force plaintiffs—all Catholic entities—to provide, pay for, and/or facilitate access to abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception in violation of their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

Archbishop Gregory acknowledged that this lawsuit is unprecedented but necessary for the archdiocese, saying, “We are undertaking this action because the stakes are so incredibly high—our religious liberty and that of our fellow Catholics and people of other religious faiths as well as those with no professed religious belief throughout the nation are impacted by this proposed action.”

He said, “The unchallenged results of the HHS mandate would require that we compromise or violate our religious faith and ethical beliefs. This might stand as only the first of such violations of our religious liberty if it were to go unopposed.”

The lawsuit also stated that the archdiocese and other plaintiffs “acknowledge that individuals in this country have a legal right to these medical services; they are, and will continue to be, freely available in the United States, and nothing prevents the government itself from making them more widely available.”

It continues, “But the right to such services does not authorize the government to co-opt religious entities like the plaintiffs into providing or facilitating access to them.”